This week, for the second year in a row, UT Southwestern Medical Center was named the top hospital in Dallas by U.S. News & World Report. That’s something to crow about, especially in a region with so many health care players.

Still, there’s room to improve.

UT Southwestern wants to join the list of the top 20 hospitals in the nation, an honor roll that includes the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Massachusetts General in Boston.

“Give us three years,” said Dr. Daniel Podolsky, who spent decades at Mass Gen and Harvard Medical School before becoming president of UT Southwestern in 2008. “There’s a very clear path if we stay focused on quality. And we think that would be a fantastic boon for this city and region.”

He’s set a similar goal for UT Southwestern Medical School. It ranks 26th among 177 medical schools, according to U.S. News, and he wants it to become the first from Texas to crack the top 10.

“I want to make it clear: It’s not a vanity project,” Podolsky said about moving up in the rankings. “It’s about access to the very best care. It’s about attracting the best students, faculty, employees and talent to this area. It’s about being an economic engine.

“Overall, in the long term, it’s about elevating the quality of life through the health of the community,” he said in a meeting with The Dallas Morning News editorial board.

UT Southwestern is already one of the most important institutions in North Texas. It’s best known for leading-edge research and a faculty that won six Nobel Prizes. The medical school, established in 1943, has produced more than 11,000 doctors and trains dozens of other researchers and health care specialists annually. It also provides care to millions through its own hospitals and partnerships.

UT Southwestern has more than 500 labs and 550 clinical trials, and its breakthroughs often garner national attention. But the business strategy is noteworthy, too, because it's performing well and spreading its talent in multiple ways.

It has grown rapidly, both with new facilities and by partnering with others. Its joint ventures include an integrated doctors network with Texas Health Resources, one of the largest hospital systems in the area.

Southwestern Health Resources, created in late 2015, includes more than 3,000 doctors. That effort is still in the early days and could make real gains in coordinating care and extending access to top specialists.

UT Southwestern is already on a roll. Since 2012, revenue from patient services has soared 68 percent — over three times higher than the increase in health care spending nationwide.

In 2012, UT Southwestern added a cancer center in Fort Worth and later a medical facility with 16 specialties. It’s also building a medical center in Frisco, and its medical staff will treat patients at a new Texas Health hospital there.

All of this is in addition to long-standing partnerships with Parkland Health & Hospital System, Children’s Medical Center, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children and the VA North Texas Health Care System. Over the past year, faculty and residents from UT Southwestern treated more than 105,000 patients in hospitals and more than 2.4 million in outpatient centers.

Such reach and growth has swelled the workforce. Since 2012, UT Southwestern has added almost 5,000 workers and now has about 17,000 employees.

It’s easily the leading research institution in North Texas. It spent almost $443 million on research in 2016, according to the National Science Foundation.

Podolsky pointed out that its total is twice as large as the research at all the local universities combined. That’s true, but it’s not tops in the state or even in Texas health care. UT’s MD Anderson Cancer Center does almost twice as much research as UT Southwestern.

Some academic medical centers have faced declining margins as the health care business continues to change. Rival hospitals are consolidating and insurers are narrowing provider networks to cut costs; meanwhile teaching hospitals often deal with expensive treatments.

“We see some very good examples like UT Southwestern and some that are not working out so well,” she said.

The group tracks the colleges’ overall financial health, the number of people served, the complexity of diseases treated and other metrics. She said that Podolsky and his team are important players on the national scene.

“They’re showing what you can do with academic medical centers and how you can leverage them for the benefit of the community,” Orlowski said.

UT Southwestern and Texas Health are also teaming on an accountable care organization that shares the financial risk in treating Medicare patients. That program has saved $73 million, the providers said. Now UT Southwestern plans a similar risk-sharing model for its workers’ insurance plan.